If I replace my EV with a ute, can I get diesel delivered?

Idrive an electric vehicle. Not many people do. They are not very popular. New Zealand’s most popular vehicle is a Ford Ranger, so I’m looking at selling the EV and getting one of them. With so many people buying them they must be good, and it has the advantage of being a ute.

The Government really doesn’t like EVs but does love utes. It recently introduced a tax which reduced the value of my EV by almost $9000 but increased the value of all big utes by $3000.

That’s a big signal from the Government that utes are worth a lot more than EVs. About $12,000 more.

I also talked to my accountant. She said that, because my wife and I own a collie – Ned’s his name – if he rides in the back the Government might allow us to buy the Ranger tax-free. That’s because Ned’s a type of farm dog, and it’s a special arrangement just for utes. If Ned isn’t coming for the ride, like when we have the back full of bikes, I just need to remember to put my toolbox in, as that’s another way to avoid the tax.

I think I’ll get the model with the front motor size 3198 sq cm. I’m not sure what that means, but it has the same 147 kilowatts as the front motor in my car. I can’t find reference to the rear motor.

The one in my EV is 210kW but because the Ranger is also 4WD I presume there is a rear motor too. I know the two motors are needed to get me up to 100kmh in 3 seconds in my EV, so expect the Ranger will be about the same.

There are a few things I haven’t yet got my head around. I know when you go on a long trip there are petrol stations where you can fill up with new diesel, just like stopping at the fast charger in my EV. That’s fine, long trips are usually only a couple of times a year, so it’s a small inconvenience. But what do you do at night at home for normal use?

I’m used to the EV. I plug it in to a standard power socket when I get home, and it’s been set up to charge on off-peak rates. What do I do for the Ranger? Does Z Energy deliver diesel? Do I need to rent a tank like I do with the gas bottles? How do I plug in?

I have also heard that petrol and diesel are both flammable. Do I need to empty the fuel tank each night and put the diesel in the home storage tank for safety? The garage is under the house, so I do need to take care.

We live on a hill. When I drive the EV from home going downhill the battery fills up from the regenerative braking, and it gives me the first 8km of range for free. How does that work in the Ranger?

Then, there’s the upgrades. My EV gets one of those each month, overnight from the wifi internet connection, but I can’t work out how the Ranger gets its upgrades, particularly to modernise all those gauges and other indicators in the thing they call the dashboard.

The Ranger has a pipe coming out the back, which I’m told is an exhaust pipe. Apparently, diesel is actually burnt in vehicles with internal combustion engines, or ICE cars, and it produces a gas called carbon dioxide. It’s hard to believe that in every year you drive, the exhaust puts out enough carbon dioxide to fill an Olympicsized swimming pool. But because it’s invisible you can ignore it.

When I went to look at the Ranger, the car dealer talked a lot about service. He said if I bought a Ranger, I would get this service for free for the first few years. Presumably after the first years I would have to pay.

He said they regularly need to change the oil and filters and do other stuff, and that I must also check the oil from time to time too, to make sure there is enough so that the motor doesn’t seize. I don’t do any of that with my EV, but apparently it’s something you have to do with ICE cars.

I do worry about oil and know they also use oil to make petrol and diesel. But hasn’t oil caused wars, massive environmental disasters and air pollution in cities, resulting in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths over the past 120 years? Maybe I need to read the real story on a big-oil-company website.

I like doing maths, so I have looked into the Ranger’s running costs. In the EV, from 20 kilowatthours of power I get 100km of driving which, at off-peak rates, costs about $3. For the Ranger you have to pay for the diesel, and there’s also a thing called road user charges that you must buy from a post office.

When I added them up, this seems to be about 10 times more than the EV per kilometre. I must have got the decimal point out in my calculations because it can’t be that expensive.

I also investigated the lifetime costs as I know all cars deteriorate with time. For my EV, the battery is expected to lose 20 per cent of its capacity at about 600,000km, and the two motors will need to be looked at after 1 million km. Losing 20 per cent of the range isn’t such a big issue when mostly I only use less than 10 per cent each day.

But the Ministry of Transport website says, on average, ICE cars are scrapped at about 210,000km.

Does that mean I will have to buy two or three Rangers over the same time I expect to have my EV?

And what happens at the end of life? I expect with the EV to repurpose the battery to have backup power for the house or sell it to a power company for grid storage. After all, even if it has lost 20 per cent capacity, it would still have 60kWh of storage, which would run my house for about four days.

What do I do with the Ranger? Can the engine be repurposed, running off the home diesel tank to also provide backup electricity at home?

There is so much to learn with ICE vehicles, it’s all a bit offputting. Why can’t they be simpler? And now, with what the Government has done, if I sell my EV to buy a ute, it will effectively cost me $12,000 to make up the difference.

To be honest, it’s all too difficult, so I might stick with what I know. My EV might not be a ute, but it’s probably good enough for now.

I’m used to the EV. I plug it in to a standard power socket at home . . . What do I do for the Ranger? Do I need to rent a tank like I do with the gas bottles?